[release] A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.

It's an issue that raises ethical questions, and some experts urge caution in treating children with puberty-blocking drugs and hormones.

An eight-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, 'I a boy' and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the child as a boy and is watching for the first signs of puberty to begin treatment, his mother told The Associated Press.

Accepting his identity has been difficult for both parents, the woman said. Private schools refused to enroll him as a boy, and the family's pediatrician refused to go along with their request to treat him like a boy. They found a physician who would, Dr Jo Olson, medical director of a transgender clinic at Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Pediatricians need to know these kids exist and deserve treatment, said Dr Norman Spack, author of one of three reports published on Monday and director of one of the nation's first gender identity medical clinics, at Children's Hospital Boston.

Gender-reassignment surgery, which may include removing or creating penises, is only done by a handful of US doctors, on patients at least 18 years old, Dr Spack said. His clinic has worked with local surgeons who've done breast removal surgery on girls at age 16, but that surgery can be relatively minor, or avoided, if puberty is halted in time, he said. [/release]

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February 2006
22,237 Posts

I believe that the choice to change sex should be legally made no sooner than 18 years old. This includes puberty blocking. A young child is not someone who has the mental capability to make these kinds of choices for themselves.

On topic: what in the blue fuck makes children these days so convinced of their own maturity that they think they can make life-changing decisions like this?

Because as a child you have no concept of how you'd think as an adult, obviously. It's not like an eight year old thinks "oh wait I better myself ten or so years to mull this over, I'm not that mature after all".

I believe that the choice to change sex should be legally made no sooner than 18 years old. This includes puberty blocking. A young child is not someone who has the mental capability to make these kinds of choices for themselves.

Though I agree with you that kids shouldn't take responsibly for more serious and permanent measures, allowing them access to puberty blocking drugs is fine for me.
The effects of them are only temporary , and really allows the kid to have more time to experience life as their preferred gender, especially into the teen years. It can also help protect them against a lot of social rejection and mental stress.
And to even be allowed to take the drugs, the kid has to go through a thorough psychoanalysis test by therapists with expertise in gender-identity, and the severity of the transgenderism has to be bad enough as to cause self-harm.
These drugs can be life savers .

I believe that the choice to change sex should be legally made no sooner than 18 years old. This includes puberty blocking. A young child is not someone who has the mental capability to make these kinds of choices for themselves.

Doesn't the process need to start earlier than that for hormonal reasons?

I think if you're born a certain gender then you should stick to it so you have a functional reproductive organ. Afterall that is the reason you are alive, to reproduce and advance the human race. If you can't reproduce then you're killing our species off.

An eight-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, 'I a boy' and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the child as a boy and is watching for the first signs of puberty to begin treatment, his mother told The Associated Press.

I think if you're born a certain gender then you should stick to it so you have a functional reproductive organ. Afterall that is the reason you are alive, to reproduce and advance the human race. If you can't reproduce then you're killing our species off.

I think if you're born a certain gender then you should stick to it so you have a functional reproductive organ. Afterall that is the reason you are alive, to reproduce and advance the human race. If you can't reproduce then you're killing our species off.

Judging on how you feel on TGism, you dislike gays for that very reason as well, as they aren't reproducing. But that's just an assumption.

The world needs less people anyways, with a population of nearly 7 billion, a form of friendly population control sounds nice right about now.

Less people, less demand, less resource consumption, more money all around.

This trend is rising in the USA, it has nothing to do with Japan. There are already people way more educated than you or I studying the factors that go into Japan's population shrinking, and I haven't heard them say transgenderism being any sort of factor.

A man who is gendered as a woman isn't likely to reproduce whether they have a penis or artificial vagina. It really doesn't matter if they have their genitals re-organized.

But gender identity and sexual identity aren't generally solidified until fairly late in adolescence. It's actually fairly normal for children to be confused as far as gender and sexuality goes, and these things tend to fix themselves as the mind and body mature.

But gender identity and sexual identity aren't generally solidified until fairly late in adolescence. It's actually fairly normal for children to be confused as far as gender and sexuality goes, and these things tend to fix themselves as the mind and body mature.

The problem with the debate of "you're to young to make this choice" is a tricky one to make, because if you make up your mind that you want to be a different gender at a young age and are prohibited to do so until 18, it could screw with that kids mind and lead to depression, ect, until they get it at 18.

Also it's harder and more lengthy to do it the older you are. When you are younger, you can heal faster and your body can take changes easier.

I believe that the choice to change sex should be legally made no sooner than 18 years old. This includes puberty blocking. A young child is not someone who has the mental capability to make these kinds of choices for themselves.

"Gender-reassignment surgery, which may include removing or creating penises, is only done by a handful of US doctors, on patients at least 18 years old"

The surgery already only goes on at 18 or at the earliest 16. However, the notion of whether one is male or female forms quite early on and as such hormonal treatments are allowed for people under 18. There's no problem with this.

they really need to wait until they're older to make these decisions
it's not a switch, you can't just change back when you feel like it
well you can, it's just gonna be a lot of time and money and you won't have your proper reproductive organs etc.

I don't really know how to feel about this. On one hand, I don't want children suffering from depression and other mental problems due to gender dysphoria. But on the other hand, I don't know if a child is necessarily mature or competent enough to make a decision that will radically affect him/her in a permanent way. It's kind of a touchy issue, and ideally the decision would be made on an individual basis

Sex changes for kids isn't a good idea at all. Of all the children who think they would be better in the opposite gender, there is only an infinitely small portion that is actually mature enough to know what they want on the long run, and if they are mature enough to make this decision they surely are also mature enough to understand they should wait after their majority just to be sure it's what they want.

Up to the end of puberty, children are developing mentally and physically, and most of the time there IS a stage where they just wish to be of the opposite gender, simply out of curiosity or because they think they would feel better if they had different genitalia, without being actually sure of it.

There is also the fact that some kids are a bit more androgynous than others, which can create bullying (just like pretty much everything when you're at school), and bullying can have noticeable changes on one's mind - some people might think they actually are dumb because they are getting called one all the time, some might think they are actually gay because they are getting called one all the time, and some might think they are actually a girl or a man depending on your original gender because they are getting called that all the time.

To exaggerate a bit, providing sex change therapy to any kid who thinks he might feel better as the opposite gender is like providing cyanide to any teen who wish his life would end right now.

I'd say 18 months is more than a little too soon for someone to make a decision like this.
I think that children should be allowed to act whatever gender they feel, but no actual surgery until their mid-teens (and no removal/addition of organs until adulthood) so they are capable of understanding exactly how big of a deal their gender is.